The World Almanac and Book of Facts is a US-published reference work and is a bestselling[1] almanac conveying information about such subjects as world changes, tragedies, sports feats, etc.

It has been published yearly from 1868 to 1875, and again every year since 1886.[1] It was number 1 on the Washington Post bestseller list on November 27, 2011. The 2017 edition (ISBN978-160057-182-4) has 1,008 pages.

Contents

The first edition of The World Almanac was published by The New York World newspaper in 1868 (the name of the publication comes from the newspaper itself, which was known as "The World"). Published just three years after the end of the US Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, its 120 pages of information touched on such events as the process of Reconstruction and the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.

Publication was suspended in 1876, but in 1886 newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who had purchased The New York World and quickly transformed it into one of the most influential newspapers in the country, revived The World Almanac with the intention of making it "a compendium of universal knowledge." The World Almanac has been published annually since.

In 1894, when it claimed more than a half-million "habitual users," The World Almanac changed its name to The World Almanac and Encyclopedia. This was the title it kept until 1923, when it became The World Almanac and Book of Facts, the name it bears today.

In 1906, the New York Times, reporting on the publishing of the 20th edition, said that "the almanac has made for itself a secure position, second only to the forty-year-old Whitaker's Almanac of London, with which alone it can be compared."[2]

The New York World merged with the Scripps-owned Telegram to form the New York World-Telegram in 1931. The Almanac survived the closure of the World-Telegram in 1966.

During World War II, The World Almanac could boast that it was read by GIs all over the world: between 1944 and 1946, at the request of the U.S. Government, The World Almanac had special print runs of 100,000 to 150,000 copies for distribution to the armed forces.

In late December 1984, the 1985 edition reached first place in the category of paperback Advice, How- To and Miscellaneous books, on the New York Times best-seller list, with more than 1,760,000 copies sold at the time.[4]

In the mid-1980s, the almanac was being put together by a 10-member staff. At that time, 20 percent of the book was rarely updated (for example, the text of the Constitution of the United States), 50 percent was updated at least briefly each year, and 30 percent of the content was completely new each year.[4]

As a publication of Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) the World Almanac would publish the NEA NFL All-Pro teams, which were also released to the media. The NEA All-Pro teams were considered the "player's" All-Pro team since creator Murray Olderman, a NEA sports editor, would poll NFL players for the All-Pro team. The NEA All-Pro team ran from 1955 through 1992.